Eric - the only elaborations I have are:
1. This is congruent with the memories of one of the directors of the Nakano Spy School, who, upon seeing a post-war aikido demo, said to Kuroiwa Yoshio, "that's not what I remember Ueshiba sensei doing. He's just grab people and say, "you kill them like this. or like this. He's just smash them down." (not an exact quote, but close enough).
2 His method at that time was to take control of the person. (Not to say that, according to all my readings of various exponents of aiki that one cannot take control when they grab you - simply put, that his route at that time was more direct).

Ellis Amdur

Interesting. It would seem that for that particular group of people in the spy school, and maybe during his prime, Ueshiba took more of a jujutsu approach perhaps.